


Newton's Third Law

by kira892



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Universe, M/M, Vampire!John, yay alpha universe aus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:28:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you save someone's life, you can't expect to never see them again. Especially not if they were a deathless creature who doesn't have anything better to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This might just become a series. Or it might not. We'll see

It 's just a couple of hours before dawn when you finally stumble into your room, reeking of sulfur and sweat. The fleeting thought of a shower crosses your mind but you ignore it, even as you peel off your leather jacket and get your fingers caught in one of the many tears crusted with week old blood. Absently, you give the jacket a sniff, wondering if you could actually smell the blood and dirt on it or if your senses have just been so successfully deadened by the sharp tang of steel, flames and damaged flesh that the odours of carnage and fighting have permanently embedded themselves in your system. Feh, whatever.

The jacket gets discarded on the floor and you fall heavily unto your unmade bed, groaning a little when the sharp corner of a book sinks into your back. The smell of unwashed sheets floats up to hover around you like a thick cloud of dust and you barely flinch, you're a creature habituated to its own filth. At least you don't have any blood on you tonight to add to the overlapping mural of stains painted all over your thin, holey blanket and the starchy, worn sheets underneath.

You squirm around a little to get yourself comfortable and you manage to nudge the book under you, right off the edge of the bed. It lands with a loud "THUMP"  on the cold, wooden floor. The muffled sound of the crooked old lady living downstairs yelling at you to keep it down makes it to your ears and you raise a middle finger to the darkness of your room, thinking the old bag can choke on a dick. You're pretty sure the book you just carelessly dumped on the floor is the ancient tome Rose values so much. It's probably a full century older than her, give or take a few decades. and you obviously don't give a flying fuck about it so what chance does she got of earning a smidgen of respect from you?

You turn on your side and squirm some more, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. It doesn't take you long, you've fallen asleep with sprained joints before, and cramped in the strangest positions. Eventually, with shirt off and everything else from shades to a belt full of knives and boots still caked with dirt and faded spatters of blood still on, you nod off.

It doesn't even take half an hour before you hear the creak and a sliver of red peeks out from the crack of your eyelids, alert and just mildly irritated.

The window is already wide open, the curtains swaying back and forth as if inviting the warm breeze of the summer evening and you give whatever has snuck into your apartment a metaphorical raise of an eyebrow, impressed. You keep your eyes mostly closed and your ears open, waiting for another sound, or a shift in the air, anything to betray it, whatever _it_ is. Did you not kill the demon you found earlier hard enough? god . dammit. If you hadn't, it’s your own damn fault then.

A shadow falls over you, dark and foreboding. A small patch of darkness splits open to reveal a row of teeth and then

_creak_

You open your eyes. It's right above you, perched on your headboard. Long, pale fingers were just reaching for you when yours have already grabbed the small, glass vial of holy water attached to your belt. You shoot up, pulling yourself up into a crouch the same moment your arm strikes, lightning fast and with more than enough force to crack the vile against the intruder's skull.

You hit it right in the eye by the feel of it and your eyebrows shoot up when the vial smashes open and accompanied by the sound of unholy flesh steaming and melting under a sudden cascade of consecrated water, there comes a loud, pained exclamation that not only sounded human, but sounded alarmingly familiar.

You get shoved hard and you tumble off the bed, surprised. The intruder falls forward, landing on your mattress, uttering profanity and hissing sharp sounds of pain the same time you hit the floor. You pull yourself up right away, squinting in slight disbelief at the figure writhing around on your bed, the very human, but very not figure clutching at one eye with one arm and pounding the mattress repeatedly with the fist of another.

"What the-" you begin to say, reaching forward to lay a hand on the messy mop of raven hair you can see under the sliver of moonlight shooting in from the window.

Your hand gets slapped away with a low growl and then it, _he_ was crouching on your bed, still with one hand over the steaming upper right half of his face.

"What the actual _fuck_ Dave??!"

You reach up and fumble around a little with the shitty old desk lamp on your nightstand. When you manage to turn it on, the flood of sudden light makes your  late night guest hiss loudly and recoil a little bit and you smile crookedly, even as an inhumanly blue eye glares at you like its owner wishes to punch you in the dick repeatedly with spiked brass knuckles.

"Well shit, didn't think I'd see you again Crocker."

He sticks his tongue out at you, carefully peeling his hand away from where it's been stuck to his face for the past few minutes. He hisses a little bit but from what you can see, his skin has stopped steaming and there was a huge, dark pink, raw looking blotch that was getting lighter by the second over his eye. He reaches out to lightly punch you in the head.

"It's Egbert now and if I'd known you'd throw acid in my face before I've even said a word to you, I wouldn't have come."

"Holy water." You correct him, standing up and reaching for his glasses. They thankfully haven't been so much as dented by your assault and he fights you a little when you try to take them off his face. "Just let me look at it bro." you murmur, prodding around the thick, black frame to see if the skin is really healing.

"Holy water, acid, same friggin thing to me dude."

"Yeah and maybe if you just, I don't know, sent me a goddamn text or walked up to my door and knocked on it like a civilized person, I wouldn't have thought you were one of the million and one creatures of the night out for my blood and I wouldn't have gotten my badass on and maimed your face, _John_." you say, emphasizing his name, like a disproving mother.

John makes a face at you, batting your hands away from his face. "Where's the fun in that?"

"In the fact that you the possibility of you getting a quarter of your face melted is a lot lower maybe?"

"Bluh bluh bluh, shut up Dave."

And then he throws himself forward and he's kissing you, arms locked tight around your neck. You utter a surprised "mmm!" against his mouth but wrap your arms around his waist all the same. You take a few steps back, dragging him off the mattress and just holding him to you, so closely that he has to go on his toes.  He's warm and light, and he tastes like lost time and places you don't know of. There's also a tinge of the balmy texan air lingering on his lips and you wonder how long he's been in the state, if he's been looking for you. The thought makes your chest feel a little warm and you squeeze him to you until he makes a sound of protest against your mouth and tries to pull away.

"Eww, you smell gross." John says, leaning as far back as your arms would allow, which is really not a lot. He makes a face, eyes shrinking down to crinkled pockets of luminescent blue in his face as his nose wrinkles up. "Well, your entire apartment smells gross but you smell especially gross."

"My do you ever know how to charm a lady." You say flatly, letting your arms go slack and drop away from him.

"Evidently not as much as you. Do you go around smashing bottles of acidic substances on every dame that comes your way Mister Strider?" John asks, reaching up to grasp both sides of his glasses to lower them enough so he can bat his eyelashes mockingly at you.

"Only the ones whose idea of charming a man apparently involves sneaking into his room during the ungodly hours of the morning and perching on his headboard to sit on his face."

"You _wish_ I'd sit on your face loser."

"Don't tempt me John," you say, walking over and reaching behind him to pinch his ass. "Your rump is made for sitting and so is my face, this pairing is meant to be like, my face and your sweet, choice ass man, shit should be closer together than a nun's knees."

"You are so weird." John says taking a few steps back until the back of his knees hit the edge of your bed. As soon as they do, he lets himself fall backward and the mattress creaks a little under his weight as he lands, spread eagled on it.

You watch him contemplatively for a few seconds. He crawls over to one side of the bed and squirms around, making himself comfortable. Dozens of questions fire through your head; why is he here? how has he been?  what has he been doing? how has he been holding up? You don't really care much for the answer to the first thing, you're mostly just glad that he _is_ here but if him being here entails something that would have you sharpening your sword and your knives and dousing them with holy water (which is likely) then you think you ought to know now before anything else.

"So are you going to tell me why you're here or should we just skip to the good part and have all the fantastic reunion sex until we can't see straight?" You ask, crawling into your bed and setting yourself, crosslegged next to him, waiting for an answer.

John just stretches his arms over his head, mouth parting in a small yawn. You watch the faint glint of moonlight reflecting off his teeth, squinting a little, trying to pick out his fangs in the dark. His mouth closes before you can and he turns on his side to face you, one eye shutting to a close.

"Nope."

"Nope?" You echo.

"Nope." John confirms. "To both things. The sun is almost coming up and I'm tired." he says with another, bigger yawn. "And also your bed reeks as much as you but whatever, I'm just gonna crash here."

You just stare at him and in the few seconds that you do, your body slows down and the whisper of faint pains washes over your muscles, reminding you that it's probably been a good 20 hours since you last slept and most of your waking moments have been spent stalking, fighting and stabbing things that refused to die easily. So you shrug and think to yourself as you lie down and make yourself comfortable next to him, that of all the completely not-normal evenings someone like you could experience, having a pretty little vampire boy break into your room at fuck AM in the morning and sleep on your bed can really be slotted right on the top of the list labeled. "Shit that can be almost good".

==========================================

Unsurprisingly, you wake up about only 2 hours later just as the sun was rising and when you do, you're the only one lying on your bed. A bit of looking lets you find John standing next to the window, slotted right against the corner, where the window blends in with adjoining wall and the shadows were darkest. Some part of you thinks that he belongs there, that the midnight black of his hair and the smooth, uninterrupted pallor of his skin blends perfectly with the shades of gray swarming in the seclusion of that one little corner. But then he reaches for the curtain cautiously, sliding his fingers behind it. You see the soft, early rays of sunlight mold a shadow out from his fingertips before John was hissing in pain and yanking his hand back. It comes away from the curtains blistered and steaming and when you see the look on his face as he looks at it, you take back what you thought. No, he doesn't belong in the shadows.

He doesn't belong in them anymore than he did in the twisted prison of madness and horror you found him in many months ago, no more than the sun belongs in the bottom of the ocean.

"What the hell are you doing?" You mumble softly, voice hoarse with sleep.

John looks over at you, startled and he smiles a little, eyes narrowing in a poor attempt at looking sinister. "Preparing to kill you in your sleep."

"That's nice. Get your ass back to bed before the sun gets brighter." You say sleepily. You raise your hand to rub at your eye and pause when you feel your knuckles bump against the smooth surface of your shades. You curse a little, hoping that this is just another one of those times where you managed to sleep with them on and not twist or deform them in any way. John chuckles and with a few steps, he's back in your bed, fingers curling around the frames of your shades and sliding them off your face. He puts them over his head, where eyewear typically ends up when the person wearing them wants to be temporarily free of them and he tilts his head at you, running the pad of his index finger under your eye.

"The movies all lied. Shouldn't I be the one with the creepy red eyes?"

"I assure you, your eyes are endless pools of creepiness and they bolster my self esteem very much." You lie, squinting at his face and thinking absently that prepubescent fanfiction writers everywhere would shit themselves to know that a pair of eyes do exist that can be accurately depicted by the words "sapphire" or "lazuli" or whatever the fuck Rose used to write (or still does, you're pretty sure) in her secret wizard porn fanfics.

John just laughs. "Good to know." he says pulling your shades off his head and reaching over to toss them to your bedside table. You hear the soft clatter as your shades fall, what you hope for John's sake, a short distance between his hand and the unforgiving wood of the table and you shut your eyes as he sinks down back on the mattress next to you.

You wake up again a few hours later, mid-noon when the sun is high in the sky and searing the world with its glare. You squint at everything until you manage to get your shades on and you make a mental note that will most likely go to wherever the billions of mental notes you make go after you've forgotten them, to get a thicker, darker set of curtains.

You stretch a bit and do a few push ups to get the blood flowing and once you're done, you stretch some more and place your attention on the sleeping boy on your bed.

You hadn't taken much note of his appearance last night, it was kind of hard to considering how dark it was so now you take the time to do just that, raking your eyes slowly from the top of John's messy, dark head, to his sneaker enclosed feet. His hair is just a few inches short of being nasty, shaggy hippy hair and you pause a bit when you notice that he's still got his glasses on.  You carefully slip them off his face and place them on your bedside table before turning your attention back to John.

You take in the completely unremarkable, faded navy blue hoodie, the ripped jeans and the battered pair of dirty yellow converse and you think that someone certainly learned how to dress up like a person from this century.

You frown a little, remembering how he looked when you met him. You block out all the horrible hows and wheres and you just focus on John.

You compare what you're seeing now to the image of a boy with his hair short and neatly combed, looking pathetically scrawny, tall and awkward in a starched long-sleeved button up done up to the collar, which was secured by a satin red bow tie. The contrast is stark between the dark blues on this boy and the blinding white on the shirt, pants and shoes of that one.  This boy looked so simple; soft faced but frayed along the edges, just another teenager among hundreds, the boy in your memories was something straight out of an episode of Supernatural, a porcelain doll kept in pristine condition by a madwoman, as if she can take all the innocence and beauty she didn't have and lock it all in him, her little angel.

You give yourself a mental shake. You told yourself you wouldn't dig up the details, you were trying to laugh at bowtie and cowlick boy John Crocker not give yourself the creeps remembering why you found a boy supposedly born in the early 1900s just under a year ago, still looking like he hasn't aged a day over 16.

You sigh silently through your nose, running a hand over your hair and with one last glance at John Egbert (you have to ask him later how and where he got that name) you head to the bathroom to brush your teeth and start your day.

After microwaving a breakfast burrito, you grab your laptop and set yourself down on the kitchen floor to check The Website. " _The Website_ " is how you do your night job. You couldn't think of an effective title to get people who are or who could potentially be plagued by things that go bump in the night to believe that you'd not only believe them, you'd kill their supernatural uglies for them, sometimes even for free if you just feel like going out and vanquishing "mythical" monsters. Because unlike most people, you actually know the wonders slaying monsters and demons can do for stress relief.

There's nothing of interest beyond a few slightly impressive but obviously fake stories that you copy paste to creepypasta for fun and after scrolling through until you hit the post that lead you to the demon you killed last night, close The Website and tend to your other, juuust slightly less interesting websites. You post 10 seconds of the new track your working on on your blog and you consider giving  the people who faithfully follow sweet bro and hella jeff an update on the movie script you're currently writing but decide against it after taking one look at said script. 

You waste half of the afternoon away on Tumblr and when your dash gets boring enough to drive you to facebook, Rose pounces like a hell cat straight out of a bathtub full of holy water and pulls her motherly snarky broad horseshit on you. You keep the conversation mercifully short, sacrificing another small speck of your pride to the Lalonde goddess in favor of getting her to shut the fuck up and off your back. 

You don't even bother with shutting your laptop off, just close the lid and grab your keys. Before heading out to get groceries like Rose wanted you to, you check on John. He's still sleeping like a rock on your bed so you pinch his nose shut and laugh when he jerks and flails, swatting at you sleepily.

You leave the apartment to the soft sound of his half-conscious grumbling.

When you come back with three full plastic bags of food on each arm , John is already awake and poking at the various jars of preserved dead things lining the low shelf above your headboard. He smiles when you walk through the door. "Did you kill anything today?"

"Nothing but my innocence. I am  child no more, I'm a full grown adult who must forage in the harsh planes of the supermarket like every other obese but still somehow starving citizen in this country." You say, holding up your arms and shaking them a little.

"Yeah, okay." John says absently, sliding down to lie on his back and holding up the preserved snake above him, staring at the ember liquid it was floating in.

After that reply, you pay him no more mind than you would if he were just the messy covers he was lying on and make your way over to the kitchen to put away your newly purchased food. And it hits you when you pry the bags off your arms and set them down on the counter how normal it felt to just walk in and see a vampire on your bed.

You look over at your bed again and just stare at the image of John turning the jar over and over in his hands and squinting at it with a curious sort of fascination on his face. He looks so...you hesitate to use the word normal because of his eyes, so bright and eerily beautiful, and the tiny hint of fang that pokes out just behind the misleadingly doofy, innocent looking overbite when he smiles just a little, like he's doing now. If the supernatural predator teeth and the glowstick blue eyes were absent however, he'd look like just the kind of boy who'd make you feel like you'd accidentally fallen into an all-american YA novel.

"What kind of dumb thing are you thinking about now while you're staring at me?"

You hear John say and you give yourself a mental shake, blinking a little to bring yourself back to the land of here and now. Once you do, you register the sight of John lounging lazily on your bed like he owns it again but this time, the image is a little different. He's still staring at the dead snake floating in the glass jar but the corners of his mouth have curled up further, fully displaying an initimdating looking fang.

"Just how you look like you jumped straight into the powerful vegan jaws of counterculture and happily let it chew you up and spit you out looking like the bastard child of Harry Potter and Augustus Waters. With fangs."

John just gives you a look, all furrowed brows and quirked mouth. His nose crinkles ever so slightly in a way that was sort of adorable, giving you the impression that he was thinking really hard. "I have no clue who Augustus Waters is so I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or not."

"Would these sweet talking lips do _anything_ _else_ baby?" You say, digging into one of the bags on the counter and unpacking a loaf of bread, some eggs and a block of butter.

John just snorts and you hear the slight rustle of sheets as he climbs out of bed and pads over to you. He leans his elbows on the counter, bracing his chin on his upturned palms and just watches you, once again hitting you with the  funny feeling that instead of hunter and hunted, the two of you are characters in a cheesy romance novel and he completely belongs in your kitchen, watching you unpack groceries like your pet  boyfriend waiting to be fed.

It sets you off balance a little bit, leaving you wondering if he really is here or if you're actually sleeping in your bed, dreaming the way his hair  delicately curls over his ears and his forehead, and the unlabeled but strangely nice smell coming off of his clothes.

John turns his head just a little and tilts it at you. When he reaches over to snap his fingers just a few inches from your nose you blink and shake your head.

"Do you really space out this often? How have you managed not to get yourself killed at this point?"

You don't say anything, instead you just grab his wrist and keep a blank face as you pull him closer. John blinks at you and you manage to see surprise, curiosity and amusement flicker rapidly over his face as you move forward a little to meet it halfway. He sighs a little against your mouth when your lips fit against his and the taste his breath leaves on your tongue is undeniably John and undeniably real.

Part of you expected him to taste like the coppery tang of blood, or unreasonably enough, sugar cookies and frosting but he doesn't. He just tastes like John, like the first time you kissed him, he tastes like toothy grins and sass and bad jokes.

John smiles a little when you pull away. "What was that for?" he asks reaching up and drumming his fingers against your cheek.

You shrug, straightening up and going back to unpacking groceries. "Just double checking that you're actually here."

John snickers when you pull out some AJ, you blank face at him and look him dead in the eye as you crack the bottle open and take a sip of the greatest drink man ever invented.

"You gonna tell me why now?" You ask.

John blinks at you. "Why what?"

"Why you're in my apartment right now and not hitchhiking across the continent in search of your sisters' decendants or her grave or something."

"Oh." John says, scratching his head. "No reason, other than the fact that you are highly attractive, I am attracted to you."

The reply had you suspicious more than anything and you tilt your head down so that you can give him a look over your shades that silently warns him that he's making you consider running to your closet and grabbing some holy water.

"Just kidding!" John bursts out with a giggle. You roll your eyes at him.

"Well, I was in the state and Rose said you moved here just a few months ago so I figured I'd look for you and pay you a visit."

That makes you wonder if this was all set up by your sister and if you should be sending her a passive-aggressive thank you present.

"Visit lil ol' me? I'm flattered. Usually the things I'm supposed to kill hate me." You say, bumping your shades down your nose just enough to be able to bat your eyelashes at him.

John just shrugs. "Well, you kind of saved my life dude." he says, mouth curling up with a hint of a tiny, softly genuine smile, blue eyes shining in a way that is painfully reminiscent of the look he gave you when he realized he was free, the same one that made you wonder if the books lied, cupid does exist and  you should hunt him down because he was obviously fucking with you sending this vampire who is totally not supposed to be attractive and near-pathetically harmless your way.

"Usually things that are supposed to kill me hate me" John mocks you. "I'm just returning the favor."

"And what kind of favor am I getting from you exactly?" You ask him with a deliberatly tacky waggle of your eyebrows that should only have gotten you a roll of eyes, a swat on the arm or a joke implying violence. But instead of any of those things, John just gives you this coy, challenging look and leans in very close, putting his mouth right next to your ear. 

If you haven't near permanently cemented your frigid, unreadable coolkid poker face on your head since you learned to do it at age 13, you'd be sporting the wide-eyed, blushing "dont-get-laid-enough" face from the filthy things he's whispering almost against your skin.

"Scandalous, where'd you learn to talk like that?" You ask a little too fast, tripping juuust a little bit on your words. You don't know if John notices but you don't get to find out because as soon as the words are out of your mouth, you lean in and kiss him right on the mouth.

"I lived with Rose for many months. I've seen things. Read them, heard them." John says, pulling back just a little.

"You didn't _do_ them i hope."

"I miiiight have."

"Dude. no. Boner annihilator, for serious right there. I won't so much as let you look at my ankles for the rest of your stay, do not tread any further I'm warning you."

John huffs. "Fine. And also you keep forgetting I've been alive for a hundred and three years, hate to break it to you but Edward Cullen really should not be the role model of _anything_ much less an actual blood-sucking immortal who's actually more than a century old."

"Whatever, just as long as I know that the holder of your v-card is not my sister we're all good."

"Alright, alright." John says, exasperated, grabbing you gently by the back of the head and yanking you back into another kiss. Your lips move, uninterrupted for several long, wonderful minutes and they separate with a small 'pop' your lips, sucking John's bottom one insistently, not wanting him to pull back quite yet.

John giggles, this soft, airy little sound that claim's spot number 2,345, right on the bottom of a very very long list of things that should prove he's not a "blood-sucking immortal" and presses his forehead against yours, shaking his head in small, gentle motions, nuzzling into your cheek (item 2,346) "I missed you Dave."

"Missed you too man."


	2. Chapter 2

That embarrassingly tender moment in your kitchen would have, _was_ the perfect segue to your bed to finally do the do and make all the reunion sex mentioned the previous night happen but that is not what ends up happening. Instead your stomach growls like a starving hyena and John laughs at you before shoving you aside with a series of irritating pokes to your stomach. He unpacks the groceries before proceeding to shoo you out of your kitchen and fucking cook you dinner like the picture perfect indie boy  girls on tumblr yearn for.

He makes you breakfast for dinner and you eat it all up because a) You think no one in their right mind would refuse bacon at _any_ time of the day b)John knows how to make the egg-in-toast thingie you've always wanted to try from V for Vendetta and it tastes frikking great and c) Everything he makes is at _least_ 5 times better than the things you make yourself on a daily basis.

He watches you eat everything he's put on your plate with a proud little smile (2,347 items on the list and counting)  that doesn't dampen even when you cautiously ask him if he needs to eat. "No, I'm good. I broke into a clinic and drank just enough blood packs to last me until the next two weeks probably. I know thats bad but, hey, least I didn't take it straight from a living person." You just nod, deciding that you'd rather not pry open that problematic can of worms until later when they're all thrashing and squirming til they're violently oozing out of the can and demanding to be noticed.

After dinner, you flounder around reddit and tumblr for a little while and in the meantime, John, who got bored of your "boring internet shenanigans" after 5 minutes, sits himself down on the floor in front of the middle-aged tv set you barely use and browses through shitty cable for ten restless minutes until he settles on something. You look up to see what he was watching and quirk an eyebrow when you see Gordon Ramsey on the dusty screen, chewing out some old fat white guy in ugly MC hammer pants that Gamzee would kill for. Why is he doing watching Kitchen Nightmares ? The shits and giggles? if there is any creature on this planet who knows what a _kitchen nightmare_ really, truly _is_ , it's got to be him.

And true enough, as soon as they show consistent footage of the kitchen, John's eyes get a little squinty and his fingers find each other, twisting and fidgeting in a clear expression of discomfort. When he sees  MC Hammer santa beating the shit out of a raw slab of meat with a tenderizing hammer, John bolts forward and stabs the channel button on the remote. You frown worriedly. "You okay?"

Without looking away from the screen, John runs a hand through his hair nervously and messes up the chaotic dark locks even more. "Yeah."

You continue to watch him carefully, only looking away when he settles on NBC and starts watching The Office. You let your attention completely drift away from John, deciding to open up the word file for the Sweet Bro Hella Jeff script and do some editing and more writing. When your attention gets abruptly yanked away from your work, you barely know how long it's been since you last looked at John. He curses, loudly and that's what makes you look over at him. You catch him just as he shuts the TV off and you blink, not able to see what was on the screen before it was shut off.

"What's up?" You ask.

John was breathing hard enough that you can easily see the movement of his chest and shoulders under the hoodie he's wearing and you lean a forward a little, prepared to get up and walk over to him in case he needs you.

"John?"

He doesn't answer, looking down at his lap and still breathing a little heavier than normal. You frown and begin to get up. "John."

That's when he finally appears to hear you. He shakes his head like someone coming out of the water and slides his fingers under his glasses to rub at his eyes.

"I'm fine I'm fine! Just-...ugh."

"What were you watching?"

John takes a deep breath and laughs, a pitifully nervous, shaky giggle. He takes his hands away from his eyes and looks up at you with furrowed brows looking like he was having a laugh at his own expense.

"Hannibal."

Your eyebrows rise slowly from behind your shades. "Huh. You're an idiot. You lived with Rose for a bit, scratch that, you lived her long enough,  I'm assuming confidently that you know about Silence of the Lambs."

John nods.

"I take it back, you're a _huge_ idiot."

"Oh just shut up and give me a hug."

You don't argue against that, just sink down to your knees and pull him to your chest to wrap your arms around his shoulders. John laughs again, the same nervous, shaky sound that reverbrated through his throat a second ago but louder, thicker with fear and dark secrets.

"You should be thankful you didn't run into Sweeney Todd on tv. Or should i be wishing that's exactly what happened? That would have scared you right off and you wouldn't have been tempted to hike your metaphorical pants to your armpits and poke the rabid beast called Trauma right in the dick"

"Wouldn't have made a difference dude. Or maybe just a little." John says, leaning against you. You turn your head to nuzzle a little into his hair.

"Really now?" you ask.

"She didn't just bake them into pies. She cooked people into stakes and stews and shit too. Someti- well, _after_ , she didn't even bother cooking until I told her it bothered me and I can't eat the things she makes in the kitchen."

"Charming. She did realize you _just_ needed blood right?"

"Well sweetie you said you were sick of cakes, cookies and sweetpies. So I'll cook only the _best_ for you. You know mommy likes cooking for you."

John said in a mock saccharine sweet voice that made you feel the chill of the sharp blade of a threat just brushing ever so slightly down your spine.

"I'm guessing that's what the witch said to you."

John doesn't say anything, just turns his head and buries his face in your shirt.

"You really should talk about something else, I'm no Rose but I know revisiting your nightmares is a panic attack no no."

John laughs. "Actually she told me that talking about it helps."

"Does it?" You ask, lifting a hand to rub his back soothingly.

"A little."  

"Alright. Wellp, every girl who'd see you would be disappointed to know you're not just vegan, you _can't_ be vegan or you will literally die. 'What on earth do you mean being Vegan would kill you John?' cries out the offended tree-hugging indie-loving blonde with dip dyed hair 'I mean it'll kill me, I have to literally resort to dining like Hannibal Lecter every night. You should try it sometime, eternal mental trauma aside, Homo domesticus cuisine is actually very good for the environment too like bam! wellp that's one less child molester roaming the streets, hey he tastes just like chicken,"

John burrows further in your shoulder, snickering loudly. You smile a little, reaching up to scratch at his scalp with the pads of your fingers, like calming a frightened stray.

"She's gone now, you can totes go Twilight and become hemo-lacto vegetarian. You don't have to choose between well done or  medium rare innocent civillian stake for dinner ever again."

You're aiming for another loud snicker but you only get a poorly forced forgery of the one John hid in your sleeve. He pulls away from you, a sardonic smile on his lips.

"Right. The only dining choices I have to make now are "would they change their ways in the near future and be a perfectly decent person if I don't kill them or am I too hungry to care?"

You open your mouth but you stop short, your brain pulling the emergency brakes on your tongue for once. John is right and if you oppose him head on, you'll just make it worse. You can't tell a wolf it's a rabbit because no matter how many words you put into his brain, in his mouth will only ever be a row of knives, meant for killing and nothing else. The way to make a freak feel better is not by trying to convince him that he's normal, it's telling him it doesn't _matter_ if he is or isn't.

"You're not evil John. If you are you'd be dead by now. Trust me."

"I'm still a murderer though."

You purse your lips and you wrack your brain for a response. If you'd known John was going to take a rusty knife and do a sudden, aggressive hackjob of stabbing open the can of worms you were saving up for opening waaay later, you would have prepared yourself. Some sort of a comforting response is just beginning to line up in your head when John sighs and moves away from you. You watch him curiously, silent, waiting. He doesn't twist the knife of guilt forver buried in his chest some more though, he just looks at the dusty old elmo clock hanging on the wall high above the tv and turns to you like the past 5 minutes didn't happen.

"It's getting late, should you be sleeping soon?"

You glance at the clock briefly. "Dude no, it's only 11."

John shrugs. "I thought humans aren't nocturnal."

"Clearly you haven't done your reading on the current generation. And did you forget you were human too once upon a time?"

"I had a bedtime when I was human."

"Right. Of course." You say, standing up and moving back to where you left your laptop. "You wanna talk to Rose? I'm pretty sure she's online right now."

"No, that's okay. I don't want to bother her."  John says, suddenly guarded. He picks the remote up without another word and turns the tv back on, jumping quickly from channel to channel in search of something to watch. You don't check to see what he decides to watch this time as you make your way back to your laptop but you cautiously side eye him every few minutes to make sure he doesn't induce another panic attack.

He doesn't. He just sits there in front of the tv for hours, staring blankly at the screen. Occasionally whatver he's watching gets a smirk or a laugh out of him but other than that, nothing. He doesn't say a word to you, not until 2 am rolls around and you decide that you were just the right combination of bored, lazy and tired to haul your ass to bed.

"I'm going to bed." You announce, shutting your laptop off and heading to the bathroom to brush your teeth.

"Kay." You hear John reply. You don't check to see if he even glanced at you as you got up and you still don't when you make your way out of the bathroom and toss him a murmured goodnight.

"Goodnight Dave. Sleep well."

You hear his reply when you've already got one knee on your mattress. For a moment you think about just ignoring it but after you've already pulled the blanket over a quarter of yourself, you toss it off, pad over to John and wordlessly kiss his head.

You don't see it, you don't hear it but as you walk back to your bed and settle yourself in it for a good 4 or 5 hours of sleep, you know that John is smiling at you and you drift off, lulled into a flavor of sleep that's a little more comforting than usual, feeling like that smile was guarding you as you floated around in your unconscious mind, dreamless.

 =================================

The next few days that follow resemble the one that precede them. You wake up, John is asleep next to you and there's breakfast waiting for you at the table. Most of the time its cold because he probably made it sometime near dawn when he was bored and waiting for sleep to claim him but you don't care and eat it anyway.

Twice you were out for nearly a solid 24 hours, hunting down an incubus and a stray werewolf. You come home relatively unscathed both times but still, John fusses over you in a totally unsubtle, very John-ish way, bugging you every 2 seconds as to make sure you're not hiding any injuries. The morning after, when you wake up he's still awake and sitting on the floor next to your bed, safely hidden away from the sunlight, like he'd taken it upon himself to watch over you and protect you from the dark until the sun came to take his place.

The obvious concern was foreign but far from unwelcome and after you rouse yourself with a cup of coffee and some pushups, you pull the curtains shut, flop down on the floor next to him and yank him down to tangle your limbs together. The  two of you spend half the day talking while locked together like wild vines. You kiss him a lot in between words when he tells you about Mr. Egbert who lives in the house next to Rose's and you nod along here and there, mentally obsessing over how he looks wearing the faded long sleeved shirt you owned with the broken record logo on the chest while he babbles on about how he helps him around the house because he was getting old and he was lonely and he was really, really nice.  "He seems like a pretty cool dude." You tell John, he smiles and confirms that he is and he goes on with his story telling, recounting to you the tale of how Mr. Egbert lost his son in a car accident and essentially treats John like his own. You just smile a little and listen, happy that he's had someone who treats him like a real parent should.

Surprisingly enough, all you do is kiss, like that's all you've ever done before he dropped back into your life. You're not entirely sure why but you don't mind. Because, as embarassing and entirely fucking stupid it is, it gets more than a little difficult to look at John, John with his dumb jokes and his annoyingly endearing laugh and his sweet-tempered smile that he should not have because of horrendously fucked up upbringing  and not think of him as an innocent kid...that you have slept with once before but again, you tend to ignore that fact because it only happened once, a long time ago when you haven't spent time with him walking around the house, wearing your clothes and cooking you food.

The thought of sex doesn't seem to occur to John either, or at least that's what you think when you head off to bed one night. John bids you a goodnight with a smile and a kiss and you leave him crosslegged on the kitchen counter with your laptop perched on his lap, which he was using to stream shitty movies while talking to Rose.

When your eyes open a few hours later, its not because of your body's poor sleeping habits. It's pitch dark, you're not alone in your bed, there were long, gentle fingers absently massaging at the skin of your lower stomach, just under your shirt and there were a pair of lips leaving a trail of kisses from your cheek to your jaw.

You blink sleepily, one hand reaching up and behind you to lay your palm against the side of John's head.

Startled, he stops and a gasp assaults your skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"Oh. Hahaha, sorry. Hi Dave."

"Hi to you too. What are you doing? Trying to kill me in my sleep again? You're not doing a very good job." You say, croak really, your voice low and harsh with sleep.

John laughs softly, brushing his lips against your ear. "No, I'm just kissing you."

"Huh. Cool. Not that I'm complaining but can I ask why you're doing that exactly?"

"Hmmm, well," John begins, mock-contemplative. "I haven't kissed you enough today. And you are very kissable." He punctuates the statement with a kiss right on the corner of your mouth.

"Words." You say, attempting to sound haughty in spite of the Marilyn Manson impersonation your voice is trying to do without your full consent. "Such free flowing compliments, you know you don't need to sweet talk me when I'm already in bed with you right?"

John laughs, still a little flustered from being caught with his hands in the metaphorical Strider cookie jar, which, in this particular case represents your shirt, the one that John's fingers are slowly waltzing under, rubbing at your sides, your hipbones.

"Well I wasn't _trying_ to...wait no, I climbed into your bed, hmmm...How do i salvage my dignity here?"

"You don't. The only way to go from here is down, down on the untameable beast you're luring out of its cage. Your gentelmanly honor is completely wrecked, let's wreck it some more, let the beast destroy it thorougly."

"I hate to ask but is that a euphamism for your dick? wait, no don't tell me. Just let me tell you that it's god awful and stupid."

"Congratulations, you just tranquilized the beast, its now totally uninterested in pounding you into the mattress. Also, stfu, I'm still a quarter asleep my brain isnt exactly fully functional at the moment."

"Oh my _god_ Dave shut up." John says, hiding his snickering in your hair. "Besides I really just wanted to kiss you and touch your skin and stuff."

"You weren't going to use dubious seduction techniques on me? How disappointing, you fail as a vampire John, F. No, F minus minus. 0/10 would not recommend to insane teenage girls everywhere."

"You know if you're looking for sex, you're doing a really good job of making sure you don't get it. Do you do this to some of the things you hunt down? because seriously if you try to seduce them like this, they'll just run away and never come within a  5 state radius of you ever again."

" _If_ you're looking for sex he asks me, _he_ the one who climbed into my bed in the middle of the night to grope me in my sleep."

"I wasn't groping you!" John protests, you grab his wrists before he has the chance to yank them out of your shirt and you squeeze them as you speak, to emphasize your point.

"Really? Enlighten me then, what do you call this?"

Silence. You smirk in the face of it but before you can open your mouth to revel in your small victory some more, John turns you over and leans over you, using his mouth to incapacitate yours. He kisses you in a way that was lightyears away from all the times he's kissed you ever since he got here, more tongue and teeth than lips and you gasp into his mouth as he climbs over you, hands slowly squeezing, caressing and feeling their way up your torso.

Words feebly try to fight their way up to the foreront of your conscious but get knocked down and swept away by the sudden tide of instinct and desire that takes over when you feel John's tongue sliding in your mouth, teasing yours, coaxing it to come out and tangle with his. Your hands find his hips, gripping tight, one of them sliding down to palm the curve of his ass.  John gasps a little into your mouth, his hips grind down on yours and like a blown fuse suddenly all hesitation flies right out the window and there were hands everywhere, kisses being planted heatedly down necks, chests.

John tries to bite with just the flat, relatively harmless overbite right in the front of his mouth but his fangs leave more than a couple of nicks across your chest, your shoulders and your neck anyway. You don't care, you just bite back, dig your fingers hard into his back, his sides. Having him so close, having his _fangs_ that close to your neck should send your fight instincts on high alert but instead of pushing him away, your body pulls him closer, inviting danger with all defenses down and loving every second of it.

You've never been more glad that you sleep in minimal clothing when John gets his hand on your boxers and get rid of them ten times faster than it takes you to get him undressed. He gets a hand on your cock even before you get his zipper open. (god fucking dammit why did he decide to wear his own clothes today? You have to remember to ban him from wearing them and just wear your stuff until he has to leave from now on.) and all coordination and dexterity temporarily leaves you when he starts pumping, squeezing when his fist comes to the head, teasing the slit with his thumb. Somehow you manage to slide a hand in his pants and you bask in the pleasure of seeing his jaw go slack, pushed open by a breathy moan.

Your hand only stays inside his pants for a very short time. John pushes your wrist away and you're disappointed and a little confused for a second before he struggles to get out of his jeans as fast as possible. As soon as they were out of the way, he squirms back on top of you, nudging your thighs apart so he could settle between them. When he reaches down between your legs, you think he's about to start jerking you off again and your back arches from the bed, pleasantly surprised when he takes both of your erections in one hand and starts to stroke both of you.

You whimper his name, clutching his head with both hands to pull it down back to yours so you can devour his mouth. When he starts moving his hips, you shudder and clumsily start to rut against him. Your cock slides against his, trapped in the warm grip of his fingers and it doesn't take you long at all til you're spilling all over his hand and your stomach. John isn't far behind, exploding with a sharp, mangled cry that sounds like your name.

He rolls over and falls into a warm, breathless heap of limbs and flushed skin next to you and your body instinctively follows his, turning on your side to face him and nudge lazily against his cheek until he slides an inch closer til you're touching again.

Once you get the breath back for it, you laugh and  you can feel John's curious smile on you when he bumps his nose against yours. "What?" he asks.

"You know I'm still waiting for you to admit you've done things with Rose that'll break my brain because seriously, where did you learn to be all," you say, words trailing off into a vague gesture aimed between your debauched naked body and his.

John snorts and you feel a half hearted swat at your arm. "First of all, Rose doesn't have a penis dude. and I seriously don' think she's done half the things she jokes passive-aggressively about sometimes."

"You'd be surprised." you say dryly, voice ringing with unpleasant stories.

"ANYWAY." John cuts you off, clearly not interested in knowing. "I didn't get any 'life experiences' from Rose."

"Where _did_ you get some then?"

John makes a noise you don't quite know how to describe, aside from evasive maybe.

"That's a story for another time, go to sleep Dave."

  Not exactly in a state to disobey him even though you kind of want to, if only to have just a few more minutes with him before the sun comes to chase him away into the shadows of sleep, you poke at him playfully until he giggles into a kiss and captures your hands in his. You drift off like that, face pressed into John's cheek and hands trapped in the warm, familiar grasp of his fingers.


	3. Chapter 3

In your relatively short time being a real life shadow hunter minus all the holy magic bullshit, you've only ever been in real danger a handful of times. Literally, you can count the number of times you've been up to your eyeballs in shit on one hand, which is really pretty impressive considering all the tools in your arsenal against various supernatural uglies is your trusty sword and some good old fashioned knives, stakes,  holy water and ancient demon repelling chants courtesy of Rose.

Predictably, without fancy, hallowed mojo like seraph blades and angel blood in your system, you can only defend your vulnerable mortal ass for so long until some big bad horror creature comes and pummels you up to your hairline in shit again.

The third time happens when a distressed mother comes to you for help, posting a very detailed, terrified account of how her daughter got possessed by a demon, murdered their cats and tried to kill her husband and her in their sleep.

John wakes up a good three or four hours before his usual wake time that day and you only need to take one look at his face to know that something 's wrong. He seems even paler than usual and there are indents under his eyes that weren't there before. He moves around like he was ill too, slow and sluggish. And the very first thing he does after getting out of bed is head to the kitchen and do something you've never ever seen him do: grab a glass, fill it up with tap water and drink it all in a few quick swigs.

"You alright?" You ask pointlessly.

John doesn't look at you, just nods his head in a tiny, barely perceivable motion. "Yeah, I'm fine just..."

"Hungry?" You ask. The word makes John flinch and you frown, watching him rub a hand tiredly over his face.

"Um...a little, yeah. I'm alright though," he says, turning his back to the sink so he could face you. "I can hold on for a little bit longer."

You doubt that and your silence lets John know as much. That's why he repeats himself, with much more confidence this time that doesn't convince you even  an iota more than the statement did the first time. You simply turn back to your laptop and open up a new tab next to the map you have open, which you were using to figure out how to get to your next target. You look up the yellow pages, trying to see if there was a clinic or hospital that you can pass by on your way.

"Where did you say you plundered donated blood from before you came here again?"

"This small clinic right at the edge of town...I think?" John says, looking like he was having quite a bit of diffiuclty trying to remember.

You just nod, continuing with your search. "I'm going out tonight. I'll stop by somewhere and get you some stuff."

John frowns heavily at you and shakes his head. "You don't have to do that. I'm still okay, really."

"I'm only going out to exorcise some girl, won't take me long. I might even make it home before midnight."

"Yeah, that's not the issue here."

You look over at John to see him with his arms crossed, hands grasping at his elbows. He was frowning at you, in a way that could only be described as a cross between pleading and guilty and you sigh. You don't want to have this conversation anymore than he does but this is an elephant you can't ignore because doing so can possibly risk lives.

"Won't be very good at what I do if I let a vampire starve when I know I could've done something about it."

"I'm not going to attack somebody! I-" John cuts himself off, gaze dropping too fast for you to see what could possibly be going on in his head that he wasn't putting into words. He frowns at the floorboards for a few very tense seconds.  You can feel your lips bending deeply into a frown of your own as you hold your breath and wait for him but he doesn't say anything. He  drops his hands and his shoulders sag along with the action, his whole body seeming to slump with defeat. He mutters a barely audible "Okay." before walking as far away from you as the apartment would allow.

You want to talk to him some more but you're not entirely sure what you should say and for once you don't trust your mouth to just do the talking for you. So you don't, and suffer in silence, wanting to say something to at least stop the awful silence coming from John, stop him from feeling guilty, so _you_ can stop feeling guilty.

The silence follows you right out the door as you leave to go send a demon back into wichever circle of hell it came from. You do your best to forget it and by the time you're halfway to your destination, you've mostly succeeded. You figure that you'll make quick work of this exorcism, grab some blood for John and be back home in enough time for John to have felt better and you to have worked out what to say to him.

Yup, that is totally how your evening is going to turn out.

You're doing it, you're making it happen.

You're so not.

Because You're so fucking wrong.

What ends up happening is, the "distressed mother" that came to you for help turns out to be a delusional psycho who dabbled in the dark arts and totally got what was coming to her for fucking around with satanic rites. She's slowly gurgling out her dwindling breaths through her mouth and the gaping hole in her neck while lying in a pool of her blood when you get to her house. And the demon that she'd trapped into the body of what you assume was a perfectly innocent girl totally unrelated to her has not only completely taken over the body of said girl, it's a kind of demon that you weren't equipped to take down with what limited supplies you bought with you tonight.

Within what only feels like 3 minutes, your spine dents a wall, you gain several deep cuts big enough to make you look like an extra in a zombie movie and a tendon in your arm gets severed, rendering you half incapacitated. or rather, pretty much completely fucking incapacitated considering you're bleeding out a pint of blood a second and you're pretty sure you've cracked a rib or two.

You manage to buy yourself a few precious seconds from total death by managing to run upstairs and lock yourself in a room. It's good to know that even in agonizing pain, you're still fast enough to run away. Out of ideas and still in the process of getting killed, you whip your phone out while you put your back to the door and try to ignore the pounding footsteps quickly approaching as you hit speed dial and hope to whichever deity would listen that the shitty, ancient landline that your landlord gave you so he can contact you works for once.

The phone is still ringing when the door busts open and you throw yourself on the floor, kicking out with one leg as hard as you can as soon as you hit the ground. You manage to get the demon square in the knee.  It doesn't do as much damage as you hope but it does enough for you to be able to grab the closest piece of broken wood from the door and stab it into the still rather human, vulnerable thigh of the demon-possessed body currently trying to kill you. The demon roars and you slide out from under it and out the door while it was distracted. Once you’re back out in the hall, you haul yourself up to your feet and take off running back downstairs as fast as you can.

What happens after that is a bit of a blur to you because you end up missing a step and tumbling down head first down the god damn stairs.  Later on, amidst an explosion of pain mostly centered in your head, you would recall muttering “Warned you about the god damn stairs bro.” because you’re you and you might possibly have a concussion cherry on top of your multi-tiered bodily pain cake. You will also manage to recall remembering that you still have your phone in your hand because you hear something from it. Your skull is ringing and you can’t understand what your phone is trying to say to you but your brain is intact enough to recognize the voice your phone seems to have adopted.

“John!”

And that’s all you manage to get out before you’re yanked back into the increasingly difficult task of staying alive. Later on you'd barely remember any of it because even as it's happening you can barely process anything beyond  _pain, oww, OWW motherFUCKER, duck, run, crawl, throw this, hit, run away again, dodge, fucking OW doing that hurt_.

The next thing your short term memory would be able to hold on to is lying on your back with the demon on you, barking out laughter and hissing while trying to claw you to death and your hands on its jaw's, holding it in place, keeping it from tearing your face off with its teeth. You're more than a little convinced that this would be it, no more close calls, this is _it_.

There was blood running down your face, forcing one stinging eye into a narrow squint. You frantically look around with your good eye, desperate for a way out, for that narrow thread you've always somehow manage to grab before something kills you for good. You can find it again, come on Dave, there's got to be something, anything.

Nothing.

Panic starts to crawl up from deep inside your chest, flooding your lungs, drowning you in fear. And just when you start to really believe you're really about to die like this, the demon is getting hauled off of you and you're gasping as it thrashes around and manages to hit you with what feels like a knee right between the ribs.

Your next few breaths rattles out of your wind pipe in raspy wheezes and when you turn on your side, your eyes widen involuntarily which makes a white hot spark flash in your blood streaked eye.  The pain makes you squeeze your eyes shut but you force them open. When you do, there's a hazy film over your vision but even if you're just a step away from being delirious from pain, even if all you can see is almost just blurred shapes and colors, there is no doubt in your mind that the sleeve on the arm that is locked tight around the demon's neck is yours. Your Broken record shirt. John.

_John._

John is wearing your shirt. John is here. John is saving your life. Those neon bright spots of glaring blue peeking out just a little behind the demon's head, so bright they slice right through the dark and down at you are John's eyes.

"John." You manage to croak out just as the demon bends over, grabs him with one fist in his hair and the other in your shirt. John gets thrown over the demon's shoulder and slammed onto the floor. As soon as he's flat on his back, the demon raises a foot and starts _stomping_ on him, repeatedly, hard enough that on the second stomp, you hear the audible CRACK of the floorboards splintering under John's spine. You roll to your feet and run for the nearest solid object you can find, which happens to be a broken paper weight. No doubt it's one of the things that's been wrecked earlier from when you were being thrown around like a rag doll. It's still solid enough to perhaps cause injury though and without a second thought, you aim and chuck it as hard as you can at the demon's head. You miss the mark but you manage to hit it in the neck.

It roars then fucking leaps at you. You take a step back, bracing yourself but midair, something snags the demon back and your breath catches in your throat when it falls to the floor and a silhouette wrapped in white and red rises up behind it. You watch, unable to do much else because of how fast it happens, you watch first as John turns his wrist and the demon's ankle _twists_ with a muffled _snap!_ The demon screams and the sound barely just escapes its throat before John brings himself down, knee first onto it's spine. The demon's scream trails off into a breathless, choking noise and John dives forward, grabbing it with one hand locked around its chin and another around its neck. He then pulls, yanks really, bending the demon back, slowly choking it. You're not sure if John is strong enough to snap its spine.

You hope he is. You think as you stand there, frozen, one good eye fixed on John's eyes, the twist in his lip while its peeled back and putting his fangs on full display like that. Your aching brain is not sure on what to think about them, all it's telling you is that you want that demon to die right now so that John would stop looking like that. Because right now he looks exactly like what he's so sure he is and what you know he's not.

The demon attempts to claw at john's hands, his arms, his face to get him to let go but as soon as his fingers were within reach of his mouth, John doesn't even hesitate and lunges forward, clamping his teeth around them. The demon **_howls_** , loud enough to make you wince and cry out a little in pain. Frantically, the demon's other hand reaches out and once in contact with John's face, tries to claw at his eyes. It manages to open up a gouge on his forehead, down to his eyelid and John yells and jerks away. Your eyes widen again when he dives straight for the demon's neck. You can't see what he's doing but from the way the demon screams and writhes frantically in an attempt to throw him off, you know exactly what he's doing.

You forgot how fast vampires can drain blood and you're left feeling stunned just a few minutes later when the demon's eyes roll back in its head and it falls limp. When it does, John practically jumps away from it, like a person who's been held underwater for longer than they can stand. He frantically wipes at his mouth like he's just been forced to drink acid, panting and shaking. You just stand there and watch like a complete fucking moron. Eventually, John notices you and there's a god awful moment when his eyes meet yours and something flashes in them that makes your insides clench in worry and shame.

John's breath hitches and you want to make him punch you, hell you'd do it yourself if your good punching arm wasn't severed at the tendon necessary for you to throw punches. You take an alarmed step forward, ready to hug him if he starts crying but he stops you with a finger. He raises it in the universal 'hold on' gesture, then his face seizes up and he turns a little to the side, hunches over and throws up all over the floor.

The rusty smell of blood permeates the air and you frown a little because it's practically saturated with the acrid odor of sulfur. When it comes out of John's stomach, up his throat and unto the floor, it was steaming and so dark, it was more black than red.  John winces at it and spits a few times, wiping a palm slowly over his mouth as he leaps over the mess gingerly.

"You alright?" You ask him.

He looks up at you and he still looks like he might cry but he doesn't. He just laughs, awkwardly relieved. "I should be asking you that."

You kind of can't help it, you laugh too. Because appropriate behaviour that should be carried out after near death experiences never applied to you. "That, you should be." you say and slowly lower yourelf to the floor. You hiss, awkwardly cradling your injured arm and call John over with a tilt of your head. "C'mmere, rip of one of your sleeves."

He does so obediently, tearing one red sleeve clean off and tearing it to shreds as he walks over and crouches down next to you. He helps you wrap the gaping wound on your arm up as best as you can given what little you have then as you sit trying to further tighten your shitty makeshift bandages with your teeth and your good arm, he pats you down for any other injuries he can give immediate care to.

"How'd you get here so fast? Don't tell me that super sonic bullshit is true too." you ask him.

John just snorts. "No. The chick who wrote twilight got NOTHING right okay? I didn't run here, and before you can ask, i didn't follow your smell here either okay? I checked your internet history. Thank god you left your laptop on, then i took a car that some dude outisde your apartment complex was stupid enough to leave his keys in."

"Well aren't you a smart cookie?" You say, taking off your shades and trying to wipe away the blood caked on your face. You should find a bathroom in this house and wash it off before shit can dry in your eye or something.

You yelp when John unceremoniously leans over and licks your cheek. He jumps away as soon as he does it and looks at you kind of indignantly. "What? It helped. and i'm kind of thirsty after throwing up." he says, looking simultaneously embarassed and defensive.

Maybe you're just happy you're both still alive, or maybe being half dead just doesn't affect yor normal disposition, whatever the case is, you lean forward and lick a stripe all along the scratches on John's forehead. John stiffens in surprise and blinks at you as you pull away, making a face and sticking your tongue out. You give him a look. "What? I'm thirsty from getting the shit kicked out of me. And blood is not a good substitute for water, ughh. ew."

John blinks, then he snorts and then he's laughing, great big belly laughs and you smile, thinking that the two of you are really kind of okay.

You take the time to douse whatever flammable stubsances you can all over everything, spare a few seconds of silence for the two dead bodies in the house and burn it down before driving off as fast as you can.

On the way home, he tries to drive by a hospital. You tell him you never go to a hospital when this kind of shit happens to you. Have you never seen the movies? read fanfiction? rugged hero types like you don't go to hospitals, geez Egbert. He just rolls his eyes at you and threatens to throw you out onto the road while the car is still moving. He does concede that you're right in wanting to avoid the suspicion you'll stir up if the two of you walk into the ER looking like you do. You ask him if you should risk it anyway when you realize you're supposed to steal some blood for him before you went home.  John stares at the road as he tells you that he drank what little blood was left in the woman on the floor before he ran off to help you.

Neither of you say anything more on the way home, too worn out to talk.

Someone is waiting for you when you get home. John sees them first and you groan inwardly whilst your body automatically tenses  in preparation for a fight when John stops and clenches his fists. "Goddammit what is it now?" you ask, stepping off to the side so you can see what or who John is looking at.

"Now now, is that any way to refer to the person who came running as soon as she saw a vision of your helpless albino ass in distress?"

You hear her speak just as your good eye lands on the very top of a walking cane, or rather the badly manicured hand that is on it. Actually her nails are all neatly filed, most likely by somoene else but they were painted in atrociously bright, mismatched colours that all trespassed the borders of where keratin ends and flesh begins. You stare at the teal blotch on her middle finger and the neigbouring splotch of red on the index one as she braces herself on her cane and pulls herself to her feet.

"Excuse you, I am a lady, not a thing." She says haughtily, raising her other hand to flick choppy red hair off her shoulder.

"Yeah, a lady that came to help me long after my ass was served to me on a silver platter. Thanks a lot. Glad to see you're still making very good use of being able to see the future."

"Indeed. Because here I am completely in tact and well. I foresaw even without the help of supernatural abilities mind you, that a _blind_ person won't be of much help in a fight against a demon so I didn't go charging into the fray like an idiot. Besides, I knew you'd make it back in one piece and be well enough to have this conversation with me." She says before giving you her infamous shark grin.

"Kay. Did you also foresee a greeting hug? Because that's a thing that I don't foresee happening."

She pouts at you. "No? Well alright, I did foresee you getting a horrible rash from the poison ivy I've hidden all over your kitchen."

"Sweet. Now can you move aside so we could go into the apartment and pass out please?"

She 'tsk'-s at you but shrugs and moves to the side anyway, gesturing with one hand as if saying the door is unlocked. John looks over his shoulder at you, confused. You nod at him and tilt your head at the door. "Don't mind her."

"Rude Dave!" you hear just before the tip of a walking stick smacks you in the shin. You flinch away, surprised and when you look at your attacker, you see that hey eyebrows have gone up, equally surprised that she managed to land a hit on you. "Hmm, guess you're a little more hurt than I thought." She mutters under her breath before shrugging to herself and turning in John's general direction with a wide grin. "I'm Terezi Pyrope by the way." She says to him, holding out a hand. At her politness, John grins and immediately takes it. He opens his mouth to speak but before he can get a syllable out, Terezi cuts him off. "It's very nice to meet you too John Egbert."

John looks over at you again, this time with his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. You just shake your head and make a shoo-ing gesture at him with your good arm. He looks at Terezi, then you, then back at her before hesitantly turning the doorknob and pushing the door open.

"There's some blood in the fridge if you're still thirsty. It should last you a while if you conserve it. But if you're really thirsty, knock yourself out. You can always suck Dave dry once you run out." Terezi says with a grin that you want to smack right off her face. John looks at her again, confused and with all traces of pleasantry gone.

"Ignore her." you say stepping forward and smacking him on the ass to get him moving. "Go, drink some and then go nap or something, it's almost dawn. Terezi's a friend, and even if she suddenly decides she isn't, i'll make sure she doesn't kill you in your sleep."

John doesn't look like he'd listen to you and he definitely looks like he doesn't want to. But thankfully, he seems to be too tired to cause a fuss and goes into the apartment without you anyway. Once he's gone, you look at Terezi with a raised eyebrow. She smiles and sweeps an arm out into the open doorway. "I set my sewing box in the kitchen, let's have a look at that arm shall we?"

With your help, Terezi patches you up like always. It turns out your ribs aren't broken but bruised and you hold some frozen peas to your sides with your good arm while you talk her through stitching your arm shut and wrapping it up in enough bandages and a sling to immobilize it. "Since doctors are expensive, you'd just have to make do with this." She says, tying the knot of her make shift sling tightly at the back of your neck. "Luckily for you, I can tell you you'd be just fine anyway...if you avoid a couple of decisions your stupid, reckless future self might very well make."

"And what might those decisions be?"

Terezi just shark grins at you. "Where's the fun in letting you know?"

You give her a half smile and she pats you on the shoulder.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Been a while since you needed my help." Terezi says, feeling out for the edge of the table and perching on it when she finds it. She smirks, lacing her fingers together and resting them on her knee. "And from the looks of it, you'd be needing my help even less in the future."

She says, tilting her head in the direction of your bed, where John had passed out soon after helping himself to a pack of blood.

"Really?" you ask and from the way the other side of Terezi's mouth curls up, you failed to keep the tiny hint of hope out of your voice. She shrugs. "Looks that way. Wipe that smile off your face, at least pretend not to be so eager to get rid of me Dave."

"I'm not smiling. Besides, you replaced me with your psycho clown, all is fair in love and war. How's the hate sex? Good i hope."

Terezi just makes a face at you and kicks out with a foot. She misses but she tries again when you laugh and she gets gets you right in the shin for the second time tonight.

"You haven't replaced me yet. Outcomes are made by choices Dave and either of you can still choose the outcome neither of you would be happy with."

"Which outcome are you pushing by showing up tonight?"

Terezi just shakes her head with a smile and makes a zipping motion over her lips.

"Which outcome do you want me to be pushing for Dave?" She asks in a tone that reminds you entirely of the cheshire cat. Or Rose whenever she feels like being all cryptic and mysterious just to fuck with you.

"Would my answer affect anything?

"It might."

"Alright then, slight subject change. What does it mean that I'm currently living with a vampire and I have no intention of kicking him out for the next month while i have a useless arm and bruised ribs?"

"It means you're crazy." Terezi says like its the most obvious thing in the world. You watch her face carefully, trying to decipher if that statement means she's planning on getting rid of John or making sure he stays. You get nothing and you "hmph" quietly as she gets off the kitchen table and takes her walking stick in hand.

"But when has that ever stopped you from doing what you want?" She asks, clearly not expecting an answer. "Anyway, i have to get going, Nepeta'll be right outside in a bit." Terezi says, walking over to the door. "Just one more thing."

You look up, waiting. For a second you think she'll actually throw you a bone for once but she just grins at you over her shoulder and says. "No sex for the next few weeks okay? I don't think your ribs are really up for that."

You raise a hand in reassurance even if she can't see it. "No promises."

Terezi just cackles and pulls the door open.You sigh once the door closes behind her and you think you can brood over what she said like she no doubt wants you to or you can just say fuck it you're too tired to ponder the future and you'll just nap. You choose to do the latter, figuring you'd be bed ridden for the next week at the very least. You'd have plenty of time to think.

 


End file.
